Siri got a makeover at Apple’s WWDC 2024 in Cupertino, courtesy of the tech giant’s overarching generative AI push this year.
Siri is now more natural, more relevant and more personal — and it has new look, including a revamped icon.
Siri will also have the ability to take action in and across apps, so you can ask Siri to “make this photo pop” and then “add this photo” to another app.
That’s thanks to the new App Intents API, which allows devs to let Siri take actions in their apps, and the upgraded Siri’s awareness of personal context including messages, calendar events, files and photos.
Apple gave the example of Siri finding a photo of your license, extracting your ID number and entering it into a web form for you.
Apple is bringing ChatGPT, OpenAI’s AI-powered chatbot experience, to Siri and other first-party apps and capabilities across its operating systems.
You can include photos with the questions you ask ChatGPT via Siri, or ask questions related to your docs or PDFs.
Apple’s also integrated ChatGPT into system-wide writing tools like Writing Tools, which lets you create content with ChatGPT — including images — or ask an initial idea and send it to ChatGPT to get a revision or variation back.
ChatGPT integrations will arrive on iOS 18, iPadOS 18, and MacOS Sequoia later this year, Apple says, and will be free without the need to create a ChatGPT or OpenAI account.
Subscribers to one of OpenAI’s ChatGPT premium plans will be able to access paid features within Siri and Apple’s other apps with ChatGPT integrations.
Chasing after other popular services in the market such as those from OpenAI, Mark Zuckerberg claimed today that Meta AI is possibly the “most intelligent AI assistant that you can freely use.”Meta first rolled out Meta AI in the U.S. last year.
Meta said that it plans to keep Meta AI in test mode in India.
New featuresUsers could already ask Meta AI for writing or recipe suggestions.
Plus, they can ask Meta AI to animate an image or turn an image into a GIF.
All AI things everywhere at onceMeta is adopting the approach of having Meta AI available in as many places as it can.
The vulnerability is a new one, resulting from the increased “context window” of the latest generation of LLMs.
But in an unexpected extension of this “in-context learning,” as it’s called, the models also get “better” at replying to inappropriate questions.
So if you ask it to build a bomb right away, it will refuse.
But if you ask it to answer 99 other questions of lesser harmfulness and then ask it to build a bomb… it’s a lot more likely to comply.
If the user wants trivia, it seems to gradually activate more latent trivia power as you ask dozens of questions.
The current AI wave is a never-ending barrage of news items.
To understand what I mean, ask yourself how long you spent considering the fact that Amazon put another $2.75 billion into Anthropic AI last week.
We’ve become inured to the capital influx that is now common in AI, even as the headline numbers get even bigger.
Sure, Amazon is slinging cash at Anthropic, but single-digit billions are chump change compared to what some companies have planned.
Hell, even smaller tech companies — compared to the true giants — are spending to stay on the cutting edge.
Europe eyes LinkedIn’s use of data for ads in another DSA askMicrosoft-owned professional social network, LinkedIn, is the latest to get a formal request for information (RFI) from the EU.
Of specific concern is whether LinkedIn is breaching the DSA’s prohibition on larger platforms’ use of sensitive data for ad targeting.
Profiling based on such data to target ads is banned under the law.
The DSA also empowers the EU to impose fines for incorrect, incomplete, or misleading information in response to an RFI.
LinkedIn isn’t the only platform to be in the EU’s spotlight when it comes to use of data for ads.
Brave is launching its AI-powered assistant, Leo, to all Android users.
The assistant allows users to ask questions, translate pages, summarize pages, create content and more.
With Leo, Brave is hoping its users won’t have to turn to ChatGPT or other popular LLMs for tasks and queries, and will instead use its service instead.
If you’re not seeing Brave Leo for Android yet, that’s because it will be rolled out in phases over the next few days.
Brave isn’t the only browser company to recently launch an AI assistant, as Opera launched an AI assistant called Aria last year.
Byju’s, the world’s most valuable edtech startup, has cut its valuation ask to $250 million in a rights issue it launched Monday as the Indian firm works to address its working capital needs.
If Byju’s succeeds in raising $200 million, the post-money valuation of the startup will be in the range of $220 million to $250 million, a 99% drop from the $22 billion value that the startup had previously attained.
The rights issue comes as Byju’s looks to secure capital amid a severe funding crunch.
Byju’s was preparing to go public in early 2022 through a SPAC deal that would have valued the company at up to $40 billion.
The company began facing mounting pressure from investors to address issues that it had previously left unresolved.
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I’m interested in working in space technology and will be applying for jobs in that field while I’m on OPT.
I’ve heard that most space tech companies are reluctant to hire individuals on F-1 student visas due to export rules and other compliance issues.
Working in space tech can be tricky for an immigrant on OPT, H-1B or an O-1A.
